Some of you, I’m sure, will want to consult this list, get your tickets, grab your sleeping bags, and head off to make their acquaintance personally, face to face.  Me?  I would at least like to see the new exhibit in Los Angeles:   http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/where-see-worlds-biggest-spiders-180960938/?no-ist     Read more

    John Gee went on from BYU (where I was among his teachers) to earn a master’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley and a doctorate in Egyptology from Yale University.  For many years, he was a colleague of mine at FARMS and then the Maxwell Institute, and he remains a very good friend.  Right now, he and his family are living in Germany, where he is spending a year’s research leave at the University of Heidelberg.  (I’m... Read more

    This first article is longish, but it’s both serious and seriously chilling:   “How White Nationalists Learned To Love Donald Trump”   And then there’s this, from back in August:   “A White Supremacist Black Swan?  Why Donald Trump’s fringe white nationalist supporters matter.”   And here are some illustrations:   “Trump Rally Attendee Chants “Jew-S-A!” at Press (Video)”   “The Latest Ugly Rhetoric at a Trump Rally”   Evan McMullin has now become a threat, so he’s become... Read more

    “It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected.  The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen.” George MacDonald       Read more

    I’m posting a link here:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com   It would be very helpful to me if a number out there could click on the link and let me know whether it works for them.   From some point on Saturday night and continuing on through at least Sunday, various folks have been reporting problems to me in accessing either my blog posts themselves from Facebook or — it’s not quite clear — the links contained in my posts.  ... Read more

    When you can find forty minutes, you might want to listen to this very thoughtful account from a recent convert to the Restored Gospel:     I share his appreciation of the evidence provided by near-death experiences, though there’s considerably more in his remarks than just NDEs.   Great Sabbath listening, if you have the time.     Read more

    We hear a great deal of confident talk about DNA and the Book of Mormon (most obnoxiously, from people who might find it difficult to spell “DNA”).  And DNA research also enters into the contentious question of Joseph Smith and early Mormon plural marriage.   Here’s a chance to hear from Dr. Ugo Perego, a trained geneticist and a believing Latter-day Saint (currently serving as a bishop in Rome) who actually knows about these topics:   http://blog.fairmormon.org/2016/10/26/dna-detective-work-ugo-perego/   The interview lasts... Read more

    Science takes things apart to see how they work.  Religion puts things together to see what they mean. Jonathan Sacks     Read more

    David McCullough, on the early nineteenth century Calvinist clergyman Lyman Beecher, father of the even more famous Rev. Henry Ward Beecher and of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin:   “But something in him made him shy away from the strictest tenet of his creed — total predestination — and its logic.  Once when he had agreed to to exchange pulpits with another pastor, he was told that the arrangement had been preordained.  ‘Is that so?’ he said.  ‘Then... Read more

    Science takes things apart to see how they work.  Religion puts things together to see what they mean. Jonathan Sacks     Read more